arms.

"Thank God, you are safe," she whispered. "What was it?"

He pressed her close and spoke reassuringly:

"It may have been that I was mistaken for another man," he said. "The
most serious thing is that I'll have to walk home. My colt has been
killed."

"And be assassinated on the way! No, you'll stay here!"

Boone thought of the veteran sitting by the hearth waiting for his
return. He laughed.

"If I go through the woods all the way, I'll be safe enough. In the
laurel it would take bloodhounds to find me, and Mr. McCalloway," he
added somewhat lamely, "wasn't very well when I left."

Finally he succeeded in reassuring her. He was not apt, twice in one
night, to get another fellow's medicine, and he would avoid the highway,
but while he was fluent and persuasive for her comforting he could not
deceive himself. He could not take false solace in the thought that his
anonymous enemy's resolve, once registered, would die abornin' because
of its initial thwarting. The night had confirmed his ugly suspicion
that he was marked for death, and though he had escaped the first attack
it was not likely to be the end of the story.

CHAPTER XXXV

It was almost a relief to Anne when she stood on the platform of the
dingy little station and waved her farewell to Boone, leaving for the
state capitol and his new duties. Of course, as she turned back to the
squalid vistas of the coal-mining town, a sinking loneliness assailed
her heart, but for Boone's safety she felt a blessed and compensating
security.

Her father's recovery was slow and his convalescence tedious, and Anne's
diversion came in tramping the frost-sparkling hills and planning the
future that seemed as far away and dream-vague as the smoky mists on the
horizon rim.

One morning as she walked briskly beyond the town she encountered an old
man who, after the simple and kindly custom of the hills, "stopped and
made his manners."

"Howdy, ma'am," he began. "Hit's a tol'able keen an' nippy mornin',
hain't hit?"

"Keen but fine," she smilingly replied, as her eyes lit with interest
for so pronounced a type. Had she seen him on the stage as representing
his people, she would have called the make-up a gross exaggeration. He
was tall and loose-jointed, and his long hair and beard fell in barbaric
raggedness about a face seamed with deep lines. But his eyes were shrewd
and bold, and he carried himself with a sort of innate dignity despite
the threadbar